"Madam," he said in a low voice, but very quietly and coldly, "I think
not that you are in such state of grace as to bear the Cross to your
good."
Eleanor raised her head and looked at him haughtily, with lids half
drooped as her eyes grew hard and keen.
"You are not my confessor, sir," she retorted. "For all you know, he
may have enjoined upon me a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It is a common
penance." For the third time she laughed.
"A common penance!" cried the abbot, in a tone of despair. "That is
what it has come to in these days. A man kills his neighbour in a
quarrel and goes to Jerusalem to purge him of blood, as he would take a
physician's draught to cure him of the least of little aches. A
pilgrimage is a remedy, as a prayer is a medicine. To repeat the act of
contrition so and so often, or to run through a dozen rosaries of an
afternoon, is a potion for the sick soul."
"Well, what then?" asked the Queen.
"What then?" repeated the abbot. "Then there is no faith left in the
true meaning of the Crusade--"
"That is what I fear," answered Eleanor. "That is why I am begging you
to come with us. That is why the King will be unable to command men
without you. And yet you will not go."
"No," he replied, "I will not."
"You have always disappointed me," said the Queen, rising, and
employing a weapon to which women usually resort last. "You stand in
the front and will not lead, you rouse men to deeds you will not do,
you give men ideals in which you do not believe, and then you go back
to the peace of your abbey of Clairvaux, and leave men to shift for
themselves in danger and need.
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